US start-up Cardflight has launched a private beta for its SDK and APIs that enables developers to include offline payments in their mobile apps.

The company argues that enabling online payments via apps is relatively common but its approach is more original.

“Stripe and other services have gained a lot of traction recently with a developer-friendly approach, however those companies are mostly focused on enabling e-commerce or ‘card not present’ transactions,” said Cardflight founder and CEO Derek Webster.

“In contrast, CardFlight is bringing the same ease of integration to offline or ‘card present’ applications, which still comprise over 90% of credit card payment volume in the United States,” he added.

Less originally, the company is also launching its own card reader that is plugged into smartphones in order to accept card payments. Such card readers are already offered by Square and many others.

However, Webster said Cardflight is distinct from its card reader rivals such as Square, PayPal or Intuit in that it does not “force merchants to use their bundled application and payment processing”.

Such all-in-one packages are typically used for selling direct to a small merchant, he said, which Cardflight does not do. Instead its strategy is to provide tools to enterprise merchants and vertical app developers so they can payments into wider applications.

Examples of possible customers are event management apps that need to offer event organisations the ability to sell tickets on the door. Or CRM apps that need to enable field sales while tying payment details to customer data.